List of 800 Approved Journals is Allotted by UGC
As per UGC-CARE order, all Universities and Colleges will have to appoint and promote faculties on the basis of the allotted list of Approved Journals by them.
The UGC (University Grants Commission)-CARE has asked all universities and colleges in the country to appoint and promote faculty individuals based on its new list of endorsed journals, in which the higher education controller has de-perceived names of every single ruthless paper.
In the new UGC-CARE (Consortium for Academic Research and Ethics) list, assembled by a group of specialists including researchers and subject specialists from different academic councils, around 800 checked and genuine journals have been incorporated. The past list had more than 5,000 journals and almost 88% of them were observed to be predatory. CARE is a government-appointed body.
The commission sent a notice to all universities on 16 September requesting that they appoint and promote faculty utilizing the new list as a reference point.
“The UGC approved the list of journals has been replaced with UGC CARE reference list of quality journals and with effect from June 14, 2019 research publications only from the journals indexed in UGC-CARE list should be considered for any academic purposes,” read the notice conveyed to all educational institutes.
For appointments in universities, aside from other criteria, academic accreditations of faculty individuals are pronounced based on the papers that they have distributed and the journals in which those papers have been conveyed.
Clarifying the reason behind the new rule, UGC Vice-Chairman Bhushan Patwardhan told ThePrint, “So far, appointments and promotions were given on the basis of the number of papers published by a candidate and not the quality of those papers. This ended up giving sub-standard researchers in colleges and universities… We want to change this, which is why we are now focusing more on the quality of research work.”
He added, “Just the individuals who have distributed their papers in endorsed journals will be promoted and appointed and if at all some great paper has been distributed in an unrecognized diary unintentionally, it will be looked into by a specialist board of trustees.”
Essentially, the new guideline implies that faculty individuals who have distributed their research papers in de-perceived journals may be denied advancement if the nature of their papers is observed to be unsatisfactory.
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What Promoted UGC-CARE to Take This Step?
The new list was made after the UGC got complaints about the low nature of academic research, and how that affected faculty acceptance in education organizations.
“We studied 1336 journals randomly selected from 5699 in the university source component of the ‘UGC-approved list’. We analysed 1009 journals after excluding 327 indexed in Scopus/Web of Science. About 34.5% of the 1009 journals were disqualified under the basic criteria because of incorrect or non-availability of essential information such as an address, website details and names of editors.”
It further added,
“Our results suggest that over 88% of the non-indexed journals in the university source component of the UGC-approved list, included on the basis of suggestions from different universities, could be of low quality,”
The paper had proposed that the UGC-affirmed list needed genuine re-consideration.
